The Democratic Party’s Mamdani moment: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, Ben Kamisar sifts through the fallout from Zohran Mamdani’s surge to the top of the Democratic primary field for New York mayor. Plus, Andrea Mitchell examines the impact of President Donald Trump’s questioning of the post-Iran strike intelligence reports.

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— Adam Wollner

What Zohran Mamdani’s rise means for the Democratic Party nationally

By Ben Kamisar

Zohran Mamdani’s dramatic, strong showing in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, in which he forced a concession from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, amounts to a massive shot in the arm for progressives and other Democrats who have been imploring their party’s elder statesmen to step aside for a new generation of leaders.

Mamdani ran his campaign as an unapologetic progressive against an established favorite who argued his pragmatism would best meet the moment, a 33-year-old fresh face against a field of experienced candidates, a democratic socialist at a time when many Democrats worry whether that moniker alienates them from swing voters and a critic of Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas, despite criticism from moderate Democrats who accused him of stoking antisemitism.

Tuesday night’s primary was far from a clear test case for any one of those factors, with Cuomo’s 2021 resignation as governor amid allegations of sexual harassment and Covid mismanagement also in play. And New York City voters are hardly representative of the swing-district and swing-state electorates that determine who holds power in Washington — one reason Republicans are already using Mamdani as a rhetorical foil to swing-seat Democrats.

But Mamdani’s surge — putting him on the precipice of the Democratic nomination, with the results of the ranked choice tabulation scheduled to come next week — is putting the rest of the Democratic Party on notice.

Democratic divisions: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a Brooklyn native who endorsed Mamdani, told Ryan Nobles that Tuesday’s results are an indication of where the energy is in the Democratic Party — primarily because candidates like Mamdani are focusing on the cost-of-living issues that voters care about.

“He talked to the needs of the working class,” Sanders said. “He was prepared to take on the billionaire class and their super PACs, mobilize people at the grassroots level who knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors. That’s how you win elections.”

Democrats’ top leaders in Congress — Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, both New Yorkers — offered more muted responses. They released statements congratulating Mamdani, but they didn’t explicitly call for the party to fall in line behind him in the general election.

And Reps. Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, two New York Democrats who are veterans of battleground congressional races, put out statements criticizing Mamdani. Gillen called him “too extreme,” and Suozzi said his “concerns remain” about Mamdani.

Read more from Ben →

Related: How — and where — Zohran Mamdani catapulted to the top of Democrats’ New York City mayoral primary, by Adam Noboa

Trump is on a slippery slope as he disputes intelligence on Iran strikes

Analysis by Andrea Mitchell

“Obliterated” is the way President Donald Trump has described Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, both within hours of Saturday’s complex B-2 strike and again today. At the NATO summit, he and his national security team are furiously disputing a preliminary Pentagon intelligence analysis that the destruction of the nuclear program was less than complete.

The conflict betrays a continuing misunderstanding by the White House of the nature of intelligence.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is one of 17 agencies intensely studying the results of the extraordinarily precise bombing mission. The pilots did their jobs: They flew for 37 hours and hit their targets, for the first time dropping 14 massive “bunker buster” bombs in combat.

Now analysts, using complex measuring devices of soil disturbances, atmospheric dust, debris from bomb craters and electronic intercepts of Iranian conversations, among other data, are assessing the remaining risk of a reconstituted nuclear threat. It could take months — or forever — to have absolute confidence or unanimity in a conclusion. Their job is to provide a continuous flow of intelligence to the commander in chief and his advisers so they can decide what to do next.

The slippery slope here is for the president and his team to jump to conclusions that the strike “obliterated” anything. Today Trump also said of Iran: “I don’t see them getting back involved in the nuclear business anymore. I think they’ve had it.”

But the independent International Atomic Energy Agency reports Iran most likely moved its highly enriched uranium to other underground locations before the U.S. strike. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told me last Friday the United States could bomb Iran’s nuclear program but not its knowledge. And now Iran is still insisting on its right to continue enriching uranium, despite never having explained why it needed to enrich nuclear fuel to near-weapons grade 60% purity — far beyond what is required for peaceful use.

Late Wednesday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, in what appeared to rebalance the debate, issued a statement that the CIA can confirm “credible intelligence” indicating Iran’s nuclear program has been “severely damaged” by the U.S. strikes, destroying several nuclear facilities that would take years to rebuild. He did not say Iran had given up its nuclear aspirations or could not rebuild.

If Trump and his team want political spin instead of honest, if preliminary, intelligence, they will end up getting sources like the agent code-named “Curveball,” who said Iraq had developed biological weapons, leading the CIA director to call it a “slam dunk.” That is how presidents mistakenly launch forever wars.

Related reads:

Trump says U.S. will meet with Iran, by Megan Lebowitz

Trump navigates the most complex foreign policy crisis of his presidency, one ‘Truth’ at a time, by Allan Smith

Iran’s strategic blunders paved the way for humiliating defeats, experts say, by Dan De Luce

NATO chief’s comments betray reality of military alliance’s take on Trump, by Alexander Smith

🎙️Here’s the Scoop

This week, NBC News launched “Here’s the Scoop,” a new evening podcast that brings you a fresh take on the day’s top stories in 15 minutes or less.

In today’s episode, host Yasmin Vossoughian talks with national security correspondent Courtney Kube about the intelligence assessments after the United States’ strikes on Iran.

Listen to the full episode here →

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Dylan Ebs.

If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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